I’m obsessed with the idea of making art and music in which 99% of the work is mental conceptualisation and preparation, with the actual execution being the finishing 1%. The idea that the ideal piece is a manifestation of thought, with the most minimal physical intervention. There is no need to rework, or change direction, strive for an effect or tell a story. Everything flows with an elegant logic as a neat series of consequences from a single point of origin, and may be appreciated for its substance and its surface without resort to aesthetic argument.
Basically, I like to sit around thinking about making stuff, but spend as little time as possible actually making it. The artistic challenge is to think up work that can sustain this half-assed method.
That reminds me of a powerful moment when Gaylen Gerber postulated, if I may paraphrase and contort his statement out of context here, that ‘art should be able to be made between afternoon tea and dinner’. Little does it acknowledge the complexities of making–his works or anyone’s–but I’ve since thought of it as the most apt metaphor for that effortlessness that artists so often desire to engender in their work. And then, as Ben.Harper states, “everything flows with an elegant logic as a neat series of consequences from a single point of origin, and may be appreciated for its substance and its surface without resort to aesthetic argument.”